Am I making a mistake?

anything for kids under five gets cut up... hot dogs are very dangerous to young children.

A two-year-old child is too young to take to a movie theater. They won't enjoy it and you won't enjoy it either. Maybe it would be OK to go to a drive-in, but don't count on you watching the movie. The other thing is that there can be a lot of things that could scare children - stuff you wouldn't think of but the image might scare you.

An example -- when my younger daughter was three, she said she had bad dreams of being chased by "a big, red robot"

I thought she just was using that as an excuse - monsters under the bed sort of thing so she didn't have to go to sleep or sleep by herself. Then, one day I was watching a kids cartoon show at my mother's house. It was called Jimmy Neutron and there was a red robot - when you heard the dialogue, the point was that the robot was ineffective and didn't scare anybody, and the little boy was talking with it. A 7-year-old would understand the situation, but a three-year-old only sees the image.

 

I started taking my daughter to the movies when she was about 3. Always matinees where there weren't many people in the theater and we always sat in the back.

She would jump between my lap to the seat next to me and back and forth, but would be relatively quiet (sometimes whispering to me but no loud yelling or screaming).

When we go to the movies now (she's almost 6), she still likes to move around, but she doesn't kick chairs in front of her and doesn't scream and yell in the theater. If she ever did that, when she was 3 of now, we'd be out of there in a heartbeat.

 

Ridiculous.

A "child's movie" means a movie that would entertain a child.

A 2-year-old can't understand dialog. Can't understand a plot. Can't follow a story on a screen. Therefore there is nothing to entertain him and much (sitting still for 2 hours, keeping quiet) that he can't be expected to do.

When a child is, say, 5 and all the language and comprehension centers in his brain have formed . . . and he actually enjoy a movie and can be told to "sit still" and know what is being asked of him . . . then feel free to take him to a movie.

 

OK, folks. I'll back off my statement a little bit. And I agree that most 2-year-olds aren't capable of enjoying or understanding a movie in a theatre setting. I haven't taken my youngest to a theatre, but my three daughters (12, 5 and 4) are there right now watching a matinee in a mostly-empty theatre.

Still, I disagree with the 'selfish' label attached too easily and too freely on people with kids. It's a cliche thrown around that, IMO, isn't appropriate.

 

Parents bringing kids that know how to behave to a theater and then paying, depending on the show time, nearly $10 per ticket should not be forced to put up with the noise of parents that aren't so considerate.

Yes, it is a kids movie. But that doesn't mean a 1-year old or a newborn.

 

I'm wiling to give my son the benefit of the doubt when it comes to acting appropriately, even though he's 2.

And if he makes a scene, then he'll promptly be escorted out, either by me or his mother. The last thing I want to do is to take away another's enjoyment of a film.

 

If I told you that the "beautiful Bonnie Hunt" isn't really in the movie -- just her voice -- would it change your mind?

 

Would he choke on one of those Giganto Hardees burgers if you brought it into the theater?

 

In a dark theater, if the kid gets nacho cheese on him Freelance might eat him between two slices of bread by mistake.

 

I think that's where a lot of parents go wrong. Here's what's selfish: You take your kid, he does something disruptive, and you don't take him out of the theatre. No matter what the movie, the other people didn't pay to listen to your kid. Still, I think the line is different with animated children's movies than it would be for other genres. I know when I took Miss Junior Wannabe to see Cars, I had no expectation that the experience would be devoid of children's voices in the theatre. When I took Mrs. Wannabe to see Inside Man, I did.

As for food safety, Idaho, well, yeah, when a kid's two, you have to be careful what you put in his/her mouth. Gumballs the diameter of a quarter wouldn't be a good idea. PBJ, borderline call. If I'm serving it to a 2-year-old, I'm cutting it up really small. Popcorn? Absolutely not. Whoppers? Absolutely not. But that's me, and it's now been almost 10 years since I had a 2-year-old. I'm going to err on the side of caution where my child is concerned. What does Uma have to say on the subject? And being from Idaho (or at least having lived there), I'd think you wouldn't have anything against mashed potatoes ...

 

Well, I do like veal...

 

OK, so how did this sojourn into the theater go, freelance?